It all
began with a visit to a reference library in town.
I was doing some research into the local
history surrounding the village where I live and came across an article in an
old newspaper cutting, which talked of the village pond being used for ducking
witches, back in to 1600s. The pond is fairly shallow now but back then, it was
reportedly much bigger (which I knew from old maps), and also, much deeper.
I looked for more information about this but
couldn’t locate any. During my search however, I found a number of accounts
describing the trials and executions of witches across the county. I sat
mesmerised, and then appalled, as I read these reports. The events were
recorded so matter-of-factly and yet they involved hundreds of poor souls who
suffered dreadful deaths; mostly women, a few men, and even children.
Most of the victims were hanged but some were
burnt to death, no doubt after horrendous torture, including being crushed by
stones or ducked … this often causing death by drowning anyway. I left the
library that day feeling rather depressed.
I have been interested in the obsessive
witch-hunting that occurred right across Europe during the 1600, 1700, and even
into the 1800s for many years, but reading these accounts brought the reality
of it all to me, and not in a pleasant way. It also got me thinking about a
story that had been swirling around in my head for some time, so I decided to
get on and write it. That was ‘Elizabeth’.
I enjoyed writing this book and also doing
the research for it. I am not a native of Yorkshire, which is where the story
is located but I have visited it a few times. I did a fair bit of reading to
find out more about the region and also the dialect in Yorkshire in the 1950s. ‘Elizabeth’
is set during this time.
I chose to place the story in Yorkshire for a
number of reasons. My ancestors came from there; my paternal family name being
from the region and also, even in the 1950s, there were still some very remote
villages and communities where the happenings in my book might well have
occurred.
Elizabeth was only intended to be fairly
short, one-off story but my daughter liked it so much, she wanted more. So the
‘Evening Wolves’ series was born and
I began to write the prequels; we decided that my books should go back in time
to where it all began. The write-up for the book gives more of an outline to
the story, so I will not set it out here.
In
Elizabeth, there is the first mention of the rich and powerful Addington
family, as they are known in later books. The lives of this dynasty are
intrinsically entwined to hers and to those of her ancestors throughout the following
stories in the Evening Wolves series. Toby, a son from this family, is
Elizabeth’s first love but their relationship is doomed and short-lived. Why
this ended as it did is revealed in ‘Eve’s’
story, which is the next book in the series.
I do not do much pre-planning for my books. I
have a rough idea of a story, but I let the direction develop as I am writing
it. I know the end ... that’s about it really. I let the characters pop up,
introduce themselves to me and if I think they belong in the story, I include
them. I rarely change much in a chapter once I have written it, although of
course I do editing after it is finished. At this point, I might remove or
change sentences or add more. This is probably normal for other writers, I do
not know, as I have never studied what anyone else does. I have my own way of
doing things and stick to it. I am also a fairly lazy author, as I should write
down all the dates, characters, their details and actions etc., and most of the
time, I do not. I rely on my memory, which is rubbish at times. I am trying to
do more recording of details with the books I am currently writing though, as I
am sure it must save time not having to keep looking back and refreshing my
mind on names, dates and story lines. I also, in each book, set the scene for
the one that follows. Because they are prequels, this can be a bit tricky. As I
am writing a book, I have to consider the main character and some content of
the next one in the series. It is a challenge but interesting, all the same.
The book I wrote after Eve is almost ready to
be published. I finished it earlier this year but have had a lot of things to
deal with in my life, so publishing has been delayed. It is called ‘Elisa’. She is Eve’s grandmother … yes,
there is a theme happening here. I am going back to grandmothers each time I
tell a story in this series. This usually takes me back quite a few decades,
which is important for the stories and also creates a fairly large time gap. I
am now dealing with periods where there actually wasn’t a great deal of change
in the communities or even in the world at large, apart from during Eve’s time,
and keeping the story alive is not always easy.
The other challenge in using a lineage of
females is changing the ‘characters’ of the characters, so to speak. Making Eve
different to Elizabeth was easy, as the changes in the world from the middle
1800s to the 1950s were huge and thus affected the people’s lives in the
stories quite dramatically. Women in the late 1800s would have had a very
different education, family role and other expectations from those in the
1900s. That period saw vast changes across all aspects of life and of those
living through that time, my characters included.
Making the character of Elisa significantly different
from Eve’s required some thought. I had created Eve as a strong, virtuous woman;
an almost saintly type of a character. I decided therefore to make Elisa less
virtuous and certainly not as ‘good’ as her granddaughter. She is still strong
but in a different way to Eve. She is also more ruthless. Going further back in
time again, required deeper research. Elisa is born in 1813 into a very
different world to that of her granddaughter, Eve. My story had to reflect
this. Life was simpler but harder, darker and more fragile. My research
unearthed some pitiful aspects of living in this time and I incorporated them
into my story. I enjoyed writing Elisa and developing a slightly more sinister main
character. It was fun.
I am currently working on the prequel to
Elisa, called ‘Elyse’. She is a different
character again from her granddaughter and as this story begins in 1746, the
world she inhabits is unlike Elisa’s in many aspects, although there are of
course similar threads of existence that run through the 1700 and 1800s. Even greater
historical research is required for this story. I am currently on chapter
eleven and I have no idea how large this book will be, just as I did not plan
the size of the others in this series. I just tell a story and it finishes
where it ends. Like all the main characters in the Evening Wolves books, Elyse
faces her own difficulties and traumas. She is a gentler female than her
granddaughter, Elisa, and not so ruthless. However, she is just as powerful.
I am taking longer to write this than the
other three books, as there is still a lot going on in my life and I have not
been able to put the time in on this novel. Because I had to put the work down
for a while, I am currently re-reading it to pick up the story so far. However,
I hope to finish chapter eleven this week and begin writing in earnest from now
on.
I will let you know how I get on.
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